Managing Pain at the End of Life
Hospice Elder Care in Grass Valley CA
One of the most difficult symptoms to manage for your elderly family member at the end of her life can be pain. Pain is so subjective and it’s difficult to fully understand what type and severity of pain someone else is experiencing. Having help from hospice elder care can make a huge difference in keeping your senior as comfortable as possible.
Understanding the Causes of Your Senior’s Pain
Understanding what is contributing to pain is crucial for your senior’s doctors and other providers to know how to help her. Chronic pain that she’s lived with for a long time, like arthritis pain, can become worse at the end of life depending on her situation. Other types of pain, like from illnesses like cancer, is likely to grow worse at the end of life. Your elderly family member may also have a difficult time communicating to you about her pain.
Emotional Pain is a Factor, Too
Emotional pain is absolutely a part of this process as well. There’s a lot of anxiety involved in being near the end of life and there may be things your elderly family member feels are left undone or that she doesn’t want to face. There’s also fear of what might be happening in addition to anxiety. Being afraid can have serious physical impacts for your senior. This along with possible family conflicts or other worries and concerns can add to your senior’s pain rather than helping her to manage it. Finding ways to alleviate that emotional pain is important so that you can continue to work on the other factors contributing to her pain.
Finding the Right Solutions for Pain
What matters most is that your elderly family member is able to find solutions for her pain that work for her. Hospice elder care providers are able to work with your elderly family member’s doctors and other medical providers to put together a care plan for managing her pain. That plan may need adjustments over time in order to help your senior to deal with the changes she experiences. It’s possible that your elderly family member’s plan relies more heavily on a variety of pain relief options beyond simply medications, too. All of these different tools can function together.
Quality of Life Is Most Important
Ultimately, the goal is to help your senior to have the best quality of life possible. Hospice elder care can work with you, your senior, and her entire medical team to make sure that she’s as comfortable as possible. Finding answers for your senior’s pain also involves watching for signs of discomfort that might not be as obvious. Some of those signs include watching for non-verbal cues, like rocking or trying to change positions.
Pain is a highly individual symptom to manage and your elderly family member needs all the help that she can get as she nears the end of her life. Hospice elder care services can minimize the time and energy spent trying to troubleshoot solutions. Their experience and ability to keep everyone on the same page is critical in helping your elderly family member as much as possible.
If you are considering hospice elder care in Grass Valley, CA, for an aging loved one, please contact the caring staff at PIC Comfort Care today. Call (530) 885-9948.
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